Pedagogia social comunitaria 3º trabajo social upo

A referential frame of the communitarian social work

1. Remote antecedents to the community

Any analysis that faces the community phenomenon is going to meet the difficulty of defining its limits, since sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers and historians do not agree on the conceptualization. Nevertheless, there have not been absent authors who have devoted themselves to collectdefinitions on the term as Hillary did when he counted ninety four definitions over forty years ago. Sure that if today we were making ourselves the inventory we would find much more, provided that every social scientist elaborates conclusions from the investigations on some concrete community.
The image that today persists in some publications comes from the idealized vision of the "primitive"communities and from the rural communities. For it we believe that it worth to do a revision, though it is shallow, of the historical evolution of the community. Some authors have distinguished a successive typology corresponding to stages of evolution, Llewellyn like that divides the preindustrial societies in two big systems: on one hand there are non centralized systems, composed by headquartersand the states. ( Lewellen. 1985:16). The bands are groups composed by some three hundred persons that move from one place to another to hunt and to gather wild food, but the most interesting thing of indicating to our effects is that those hunters and recollectors possess a social egalitarian organization, and take to end the allotment of nourishing goods being based on the reciprocity. There areno stable, but occasional leaders and without coercive power. The decisions are taken by the group and the private property does not exist. (krader, 1982:24-48). It is the social organization described by Engels as "primitive communism." Probably these characteristics exposed in pure condition are those who have been done coincided with the idealized community.
The societies organized in a tribalform are segmented, appearing the development of associations of diversely nature, but fundamentally based on groups of age. There is no central authority, but the headquarters begin to be hereditary. As this group of society evolves the competition appears for the control of the resources, starting already drifting apart from the characteristics that we have given of the organizations of bands.The societies with headquarters are enthroned the category of centralized social organization. The equality practically vanishes. Appearently, on the other hand, classes and lineages of elite with theocratic structure, passing of leadership – based on personal qualities and of acquired character- to the headquarters in strict sense characterized by the permanency in the cargo.

Theappearance of the pristine states develop a supreme authority for the governing of the society. The development of the organization state runs in parallel with the changes in economic development.

For some authors this evolutionary process from the organizations in bands up to the organization state does not constitute a “continum”, but a discontinued process; but it is not our intention to investigatethis polemic opened in the area of social sciences, fundamentally between political scientists. We are interested in continuing with the communitarian organizations that, Guadiana river, are appearing and disappearing, sometimes as concrete accomplishments and not in few occasions as literary Utopian descriptions. In this way we can discover that the community practice like social reality isconsubstantial to the human being and so ancient as the humanity. Before the Christian age of the Quibblers and Greek Cynic’s on having thought over the socialism, they began an attempt of materialization of the communitarian practice based on the rejection of the social conventionalism. In the same Roman Empire, religious communities existed, whose members were joined to the Christian faith, but...